What the F*** Did I Just See? – Fear and Loathing on Madison Avenue

When you watch as many movies as I do, sometimes you come across something that just blows your mind. When this happens, it’s best to write it down and pray you never see it again.

What the F*** Was I Watching? : Mad Men, Season 6, Episode 8 “The Crash” What the F*** Did I Just See? : Mad Men Tweaked Out Like Woah

Seriously, Mad Men, if you keep this up, I’m going to have to have a spin-off article specifically for ‘What the F*** Did I Just See on Mad Men’. Last week, I saw Don Draper play a creepy game of ‘Simon Says’, which ultimately devolved into Sad Don being sad. This week… well, I’m not even sure if I actually saw what I saw this week.

In a plot point that hits a little too close to home for me, the team is stuck with weekend work trying to come up with creative to pitch to Chevy. As they are all already burned out from the week, exec Jim Cutler sets everyone up with a “doctor” to administer a cure all for being tired: speed.

A couple of decades before the cocaine-fueled 1980’s, I guess the best way to get the creative juices flowing without the inconvenient need for sleep was to get a quick shot in the ass of… vitamins. Hey, if it’s good for Lenny Dykstra…

What transpires is like something out of Reefer Madness as nearly the entire office is tweaked to the point that they nearly shake to pieces; almost like when you try to drive a Chevy Cavalier past 80 miles per hour. I know from experience.

Don’s experience nearly plays out like those episodes of The Sopranos where Tony gets food poisoning or the flu and drifts in and out of fantasy and reality. He drifts between flashbacks of himself as a child living in a whorehouse to a reality in which he loses track of the time, the day, and finds himself just standing for long periods of time, his mind drifting to other places. Meanwhile, Stan runs around the office, gets a pen stuck in his arm like a dart, tries to have sex with Peggy, and is sad about the death of his young cousin in Vietnam.

None of these experiences quite match how the speed affected Ken Cosgrove. I leave this GIF, as it’s the only way to do it justice.

Source: Vulture.com

The scenes within the office feel like a film reel about to catch fire; kinetic, manic, the fabric of the agency seems seconds away from becoming frayed. I give special credit to the sound design of these scenes. I have to go back and listen to how the office scenes usually play during a normal episode, but in this one, I became very aware of phones ringing nonstop to the point I thought I was going mad as well.